Messages

Wait, out of all the Hitchcock films you're going to go for Rear Window? Fun, sure, but it hardly compares with North By Northwest or Psycho. It's better than The Birds, but not as good as Rebecca.

The Third Man. Or Sweet Smell of Success. Or Vertigo. Or The Curse of Frankenstein (well, how can you expect me to pick just one?)

I don't like any of these people or their dreary books - is there something wrong with me?

What was that short film Brett Ratner made about that dwarf?

Vinnie Fucking Jones?!?!?

I'm glad I never bothered to watch these films now!

And he's a journalist, so he knows what he's talking about when it comes to lying.

Are they still trying to make that? I always thought it could only really work as a notional sequel to Fight Club...

"Any idea if that's been released on DVD? The last I heard, it was still hovering in Beeb archive limbo somewhere"

Still hovering I'm afraid (unless the BBC are keeping resotration plans extrememly quiet). Not helped by the fact that some episodes are apparently lost beyond repair (though as usual there are weird foreign bootlegs lying about the place).

Last time that I know of that it was screened was by the BFI at the NFT.

Yeah, but it's not nearly as good as the Rudolph Cartier/Nigel Kneale BBC version (for which Peter Cushing won the Best Actor BAFTA for his role as Winston Smith).

"Actually, Kubrik was working from the American version of the book and didn't realise that there was a last chapter."

That's true, in that Kubrick originally read it in the abreviated American edition, but by the time it came to film the thing, he was only more than aware that there was an additional endinging. Burgess apparently pleaeded with Kubrick to let him write the screenplay, but Kubrick refused, and decided he preferred the original Americanised ending, which meant that Burgess always despised the film.

As for sticking closely to the book - Gilliam's adaptation of Thompson's Fear & Loathing is pretty spot on the mark. There's lot's of stuff cut out, but it perfectly captures the spirit of the book, whilst also expanding on elements of it in certain places for those already in the know.

Not with you, I don't.

No, you're wrong, and I hate you.

Is it because everyone is talking over each other and no-one understands what anyone else is talking about, not unlike a shouting match itself?

Damn, WOD! And here I was thinking this was going to be a thread of onanistic double entendre paradise.

"Mills has clearly brought Slaine to a natural close, what with Ukko having gone, the Sea Demons pretty much comprehensively vanquished, Niamh dead, the tribes in another dimensions (oh, all right, "density") and the last loose end (Kai) apparently to be wound up in the epilogue."

Ukko's not gone, he's merely resting, you plum!